


Running to Stand Still

by wytchwood



Category: IT (2017)
Genre: !!!!, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Depression, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Stanlon - Freeform, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, later pairings to come, my first fic lads, side reddie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-12 20:03:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12967338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wytchwood/pseuds/wytchwood
Summary: Who knew they made you go to therapy after you try to kill yourself?





	Running to Stand Still

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on tumbr @stannuris  
> i swear there's gonna be a happy ending!

Stan Uris did not want to get out of bed.

Of course, he had woken up in this same predicament every morning for the last year.  But today, he didn’t want to get out of bed more than usual.  In the light that filtered through his half-closed blinds, Stan could make out the calendar that hung above his desk.  The month of October was marked by a green-headed tanager perched delicately on a branch, head cocked slightly as if to ask, _“what’s the problem, Stan?”_

 _The problem,_ Stan thought miserably, _is that I have to get out of bed and see the concern on my roommates’ face as I head to therapy._

He could already envision Eddie’s mouth twisting before finally settling into a toothless smile, eyebrows knitted in concern.  He would splutter before offering Stan a yogurt cup, or toast, or some other breakfast food he wouldn’t accept.  He would try to maintain eye contact, but his gaze would slowly descend until it rested on his forearms.  Stan always wore long sleeves, but they both knew what marred the skin beneath.

Richie, on the other hand, would greet him too loudly, gesticulate too wildly, and look him in the eye too rarely.  To an acquaintance, their interactions would appear to be nothing out of the ordinary.  Richie’s jokes were always airy and casual, but the tightness that clipped each word betrayed his true feelings.  Stan was one of Richie’s best friends, but he was also a stranger that Richie wasn’t quite comfortable being himself in front of.

Overall, the prospect of facing Eddie and Richie this morning was perhaps just as debilitating as therapy.

The green-headed tanager stared back at Stan with blank, black eyes. _“Well, Stan.  What did you expect after a stunt like that?”_

_Fuck you, bird._

Stan pushed the duvet aside and brushed a quick hand through his curls.  His fingers caught on the knots that had formed no doubt due to all the tossing and turning he had done during the night.  He grimaced slightly before forcing himself to roll out of bed and stumble into his on-suite bathroom.  As he brushed his teeth, Stan listened to the dull thumping of footsteps and the clattering of pans above him.  Every now and again, an easy laugh would disrupt the sound of kitchen puttering. While the sound of his roommates’ domesticity had at one point elicited feelings of comfort in Stan, it was now a source of anxiety.  The low hum of conversation caused the ever-present knots that lived in Stan’s stomach to tighten.  

Once he had showered, combed his hair, and dressed (a long-sleeved eggshell button-up and slacks), Stan grabbed his keys and began the ascent up the basement stairs.

He had moved into the basement of Eddie and Richie’s cramped, 1970s townhouse after Patty had left him.  They had insisted that he wasn’t intruding, and _Stan_ had insisted it was only going to be for a month or two, tops. “Don’t worry Stannie,” Richie had smirked, “we knew it was only a matter of time before Pat came to her senses. Stay as long as you need.”

  
That had been nearly two years ago.  Eddie and Richie had never griped or even asked when Stan had intended on moving out, not even in passively.  In fact, they actually enjoyed having Stan as their live-in third wheel.  He was tidy and quiet, and was willing to clean the bathroom; a task that had been a source of constant bickering for Eddie and Richie before Stan had moved in. He had been a model roommate up until the oday when Eddie had found him in the tub of the upstairs bathroom. After that, Stan’s friends had been a little bit warier of his lodging.  He couldn’t blame them.

“Morning,” Stan greeted as he emerged into the narrow kitchen. Eddie swiveled his head to greet him over his shoulder from his position in front of the stove.  His lips curved upwards, but his eyebrows furrowed.    
“Hey, Stan,” he hesitated for a moment, his mouth opening and closing as he struggled for words.  Finally, he settled on: “How’re you feeling about today?”

  
Before Stan could offer any sort of response, Richie had slapped his hand against the kitchen table, making the plate of waffles perched in front of him shudder.  
“He’s probably feeling _great_ , Eds!  He’s about to re-enact a real-life _porno._ ”  
Richie spun his fork between his fingers, wriggling his eyebrows as he looked over the top of his glasses in mock seduction.  
“And how does _this_ make you feel, _Mr. Uris_?”  
Stan rolled his eyes, swatting the side of Richie’s head lightly as he squeezed between the two boys, and towards the front door.  
“Beep, beep, Rich.”

As he pulled on his jacket, Stan pretended not to notice the look that was exchanged between the two.  
“You’re not gonna have breakfast?  I made waffles,” Eddie questioned in a voice that was probably supposed to come off as breezy and casual.    
“Yeah, they’re kosher…whatever the fuck that means,” Richie added, but he stared down at his own plate as he spoke. For a fleeting moment, Stan wanted to scream at him to just _fucking look him in the eye_ , but the urge dissipated just as quickly as it had arisen. 

“I’m not really hungry.  Probably the meds.”  
Eddie bit his lip, quiet for a moment. Stan had a hand rested on the doorknob, but knew that the conversation wasn’t quite over.  He was almost certain that Eddie had spent nights researching SSRIs and tricyclics, and the difference between the two.  He would know every single side-effect, and how to tell when the dosage needed to be upped.  All of Eddie’s research was poised on the tip of his tongue- Stan could see it struggling to escape.  But Eddie swallowed it, put on the same timid smile, and gestured towards the fridge with his spatula.

“Fair enough.  Do you wanna take a yogurt cup for later?  Richie picked up Oikos, and I think there’s some key lime left.”

And so, Stan had left that morning with a cup of Greek yogurt that he knew he wouldn’t eat in his jacket pocket, and Richie and Eddie’s worried eyes burning into the back of his scalp.

Stan’s appointment was downtown, a fifteen-minute drive that came and went much too quickly for his liking.  He had always enjoyed driving, as it had given him some menial task to focus on instead of the spin-cycle of thoughts that tumbled fervently through his head.  He had needed that reprieve this morning, and for a moment he thought wistfully of Patty’s luxury apartment that sat at the edge of the city in a neighbourhood that was too new to have garnered any sort of name for itself.  From there, it would’ve taken Stan an extra forty-five minutes of driving.  He fantasized about those forty-five minutes as he parked the car in the near-empty lot, and trudged into 1435 Cotswold Avenue.

The lobby was what was to be expected from any walk-in clinic; plastic chairs in an assortment of unappealing tans and burgundies lined up against the walls, a variety of out-of-date People and Good Housekeeping magazines fanned out across a glass coffee table, and a handful of eclectic clients with eyes desperate to look anywhere but at another person.  It was exactly what Stan had expected.

He approached the counter, and was greeted by a plump middle-aged woman.  She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose once he neared.  She offered a polite smile, and Stan noticed that she had bright pink lipstick on her right incisor.  
“May I help you?”  
“Uh, yeah.  I have an appointment with Dr. Morgan for ten.”

Stan focused on the pamphlets for seasonal depression and borderline personality disorder as the receptionist typed something into her computer. The models stared back at him with blank eyes and big, cheesy grins.  
“Stanley Uris?”  
He gave up on his staring contest with the pamphlets and met her expectant gaze.  He nodded once, which prompted her to type furiously once more.

“Right, well you’re right on time!  Dr. Morgan’s nine o’clock cancelled, so you should be able to walk right in.”  
Stan mustered a grateful smile, though something in his stomach churned as he followed the woman across the waiting room and towards a long, carpeted hallway.  Stan counted three doors before they stopped in front of one that had DR. K. MORGAN engraved into a silver plaque.  The receptionist knocked twice before opening the door enough to poke her head in.

“Dr. Morgan, your ten o’clock is here.”

There was a mumbled response that Stan couldn’t quite make out before the receptionist pushed the door open and stepped aside.  She smiled happily as he passed, and he offered her a soft, breathless thank you.

The woman sitting behind the desk was young, perhaps mid-thirties. Her blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail, and she surveyed Stan with warm blue eyes as he tentatively made his way into her office.  Dr. Morgan stood to greet him, and held out her right hand.

“You must be Stanley.  I’m Dr. Morgan.”  
Her voice was soft with cordial; a feature that no doubt came with dealing with suicidal individuals for a living.  It wasn’t unpleasant.  Stan reached across her desk and pumped her hand up and down twice.  
“Nice to meet you.  Stan’s fine.”

She nodded with a smile, and gestured him towards two overstuffed armchairs by the window.  
“Okay, Stan.  Did you wanna take a seat?”

 _No, I want to leave_ , Stan thought despondently as he obliged.  It wasn’t that he had anything against therapy; he wanted nothing more than to walk out cured of any negative thought or compulsion that had ever possessed him.  However, the issue was that he believed himself to be entirely beyond the sort of help that Dr. Morgan could offer.  Stan prided himself as a logician; someone who held rationality above all.  What his rational mind was telling him was that there was no possible way things were going to get better.  He had crunched the numbers, done the research and played with the algorithms, and the unfortunate result was that there was no way to crawl out of this pessimistic hole he seemed to find himself in.  Really, the only reason he even made the appointment in the first place was to ease Eddie’s anxiety, not his own.

Dr. Morgan lowered herself down into the armchair opposing him, crossed one leg over the other, and balanced a clipboard on top of her thigh. There was a black pen poised in her left hand, ready to write down the Tragic Story of Stanley Uris.    
Stan quickly swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat.

“Okay, Stan, I’d like to begin by just asking you a couple of questions about yourself.  How old are you?”

These were the types of questions that Stan had no problem answering: age, occupation, where he lived and who he lived with, had he ever seen a therapist before ( _twenty-three, university student, 2174 Osler Avenue in a basement suite, two roommates, Eddie and Richie, a counselor once or twice in high school…_ ).  They were easy and semantic, and he rattled them off like he was reciting numerals from his calculator in a maths class.  He felt at ease for the first time since he walked in the door.

“Okay, good.  And why are you here today?”

The confidence that Stan had garnered suddenly dissipated from underneath him. 

“P-pardon me?”

Dr. Morgan, who had been scribbling furiously before this, lifted her ballpoint pen from the paper and peered up at him with a lopsided smile.

“Well, most people don’t just wake up in the morning and suddenly decide they’re going to try therapy.  Usually there’s something that spurs them, you know?  What was that spurring moment for you?”

Stan felt the words bubble and catch in his throat.  He had never said it out loud; he’d never had to. Everyone knew what had happened, and everyone worried about him, but nobody wanted to say why.  This was especially true for Stan.    
He stared back at Dr. Morgan for a moment, frozen, before clearing his throat, forcing the words to detach themselves from the back of his mouth.

“I tried to kill myself.”

Dr. Morgan began writing once more, her eyes focused on her notes as she asked, “how?”

“I, uh…I slit my wrists in the bathtub.”

The words hung in the air for a moment, heavy with the weight of all that had that transpired after that one day.  Stan felt an icy feeling well in his chest, and he watched his therapist continue to write without a moment’s hesitation.  Once she had finished, she leaned back in her chair to survey him.  She wasn’t smiling anymore, but her eyes conveyed something akin to compassion.

“Right, okay…and what compelled you to do that?”

The answered seemed pretty obvious to Stan.

“I didn’t want to live anymore.”

“Well, sometimes people will attempt suicide for other reasons, sometimes as a cry for help.  Did you tell someone, or leave a note?”

Stan shook his head, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

“No…my roommate found me.”

Dr. Morgan’s eyebrows furrowed, and she tapped her pen twice against her lips.

“You said earlier that you lived in the basement.  Did you do it in that bathroom?”

“No, the upstairs one.”

Stan didn’t understand why it mattered which bathroom he tried to kill himself in, but apparently it was important because Dr. Morgan was scribbling again.  He was tempted to lean forward and catch a glimpse of her scrawlings.  Before he could do so, however, Dr. Morgan had set down her pen and crossed her arms on top of her clipboard.

“Well, Stan, here’s what I’m thinking.  The upstairs bathroom is your roommates’, right?  If you really didn’t want anyone to find you, I think you would’ve slit your wrists in the bathroom in the basement; that’s your own personal space, and no one would have any reason to go in there until he realized you were missing, and that wouldn’t be for at least a day.  Do you think it’s possible that you did it upstairs because you wanted to be found?”

Stan thought about the question, mulling it over in his head. Did he want Eddie to find him, arms opened from the top of his wrists to the crook of his elbows?  Eddie hated blood, and apparently there had been quite a lot that day.  Stan felt bad that he had probably scarred him for life.  He had only wanted to hurt himself, not Eddie and Richie.

“No, I wanted to die in the sunlight.  There’s no windows in the downstairs bathroom, but there’s one above the tub upstairs.” 

His answer was steely, but a knowing smile played at Dr. Morgan’s lips. It trigged a spasm of annoyance in Stan. Who was she to question the motives behind his suicide attempt?  There was no _crying for help_ about it- Stan Uris had really and truly wanted to die that day.  Sometimes, he still did.

“That’s fair.  But can you do me a favour, and just consider that idea between now and our next session?”

He nodded, but was trying to cram the notion into the depths of his subconscious at that same moment.  

The remainder of the session was spent talking about his depression, family history and how he was feeling on his medication.  Dr. Morgan had stopped probing, and didn’t mention his suicide attempt again.  Since she was a professional, Stan assumed that she could tell when she had crossed a line with a patient.  Still, he knew that the topic was probably going to come up again next week, and so the anxiousness that had emerged did not wane.  

At eleven, Dr. Morgan stood and tucked her notes underneath her arm.

“Okay, Stan.  I think that this was a very promising first session.  Should I expect you the same time next week?”

Stan nodded meekly as he raised himself from the armchair.  He quickly shrugged into his jacket in an attempt to ward off the complete feeling of vulnerability.  Dr. Morgan held her hand out once more, and smiled as he grasped it.

“And, Stan…will you please think about what we talked about today? Even if you don’t think it’s true at all?”

Stan mumbled some sort of affirmation, before fumbling with the doorknob and retreating out of her office.  He felt like his ears had been stuffed with cotton, and his throat was raw as if he had been swallowing sandpaper all morning.  He knew what Dr. Morgan had said wasn’t true, but it still bothered him.  

“Hey, man.  You okay?”

Stan’s eyes flicked upward and he pursed his lips.  A black boy, about the same age as he was, looked up at him from behind the receptionist’s desk.  He looked concerned, but not in the same way that Eddie or Richie did; not like he was a piece of fine china that was about to splinter at any moment, but like he was a genuine person who appeared to be upset. The boy’s lips curved into a smile, his eyebrows raised.

“Yeah…f-fine,” Stan finally spluttered, his hands retreating into his jacket pockets.  The fingers on his right wrapped around the yogurt cup and squeezed instinctively.    
The man’s grin grew.

“Alright, just making sure.  See you next week, then!”

Stan managed to reciprocate a gentle smile of his own as he shouldered the door to the building open.

_Yeah, I guess you will._


End file.
